Teens connected to social media more frequently (five or more times a day, i.e. heavy users) are significantly more likely to experience aspects of FoMO such as:

• It is important that I understand my friends in-jokes (78%);
• Fearing their friends are having more rewarding experiences than them (54%);
• Worrying when they find out their friends are having fun without them (60%); and
• Being bothered when they miss out on planned get-togethers (63%).

The Australian Psychological Society has just released the key findings of its 2015 Stress and Wellbeing survey. The survey examined how 1,500 Aussies experience and cope with stress. This publication is notable, in that it includes for the first time measurements of social media use and FoMO.
The survey came to my attention when I did a quick Google search for the term “FoMO Australia” – I’m weird like that. I was greeted with headlines like “#FOMO leading to higher levels of depression, anxiety for heavy social media users”, “Wellbeing survey reveals nearly half of teens stressed by social media” and “FoMO sending kids loco” (this final article made the most incredible associations to online gambling, internet addiction, alcoholism and drug use – the survey doesn’t mention these terms, by the way).

I’ve posted the key findings of the survey, with regard to teenagers, above – these are the findings which seem to be raising the most alarm in the Australian media – but one must bear in mind that the total number of teenagers in the survey was 210. That said, according to the survey, 25% of those surveyed admitted that they were “constantly online” and 56% of teenagers were deemed “heavy users” due to the fact that they interacted with social media more than five times per day. These figures would seem to tally with survey results of a Pew Research Centre study in April of this year, where it was found that, because of the convenience of mobile technology, 92% of teenagers go online daily, 56% of teens (13-17) are online several times a day and 24% of those are online “almost constantly”.
In 2010, a national study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan organisation found that young Americans, between 8 and 18, spent on average 7 ½ hrs across the day using electronic devices. This excluded the time spent talking and texting. In this study, when media multi tasking was taken into account, the researchers claimed that the sample were cramming 11 hrs of content into the 7 ½ hours. Internet users in Ireland spend, on average, nearly 4 hours a day on our computers and an average of almost 2 hours per day connected via mobile devices, so our usage rates would be similar to those in the US.
But, what do these figures really tell us? It is truly overly simplistic to use time spent doing something as a metric for addiction or as an antecedent to alcohol and drug use? Even the American Academy of Paediatrics, who used to recommend 1-2 hours of screen time per day, for teens, now propose more reasonable, understanding and complete guidelines for kids who are “growing up digital”. (https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/Children-And-Media-Tips-For-Parents.aspx)
I think that we need to re-examine how we are measuring how young people interact with technology; we need to stop measuring time spent online, for a start. Further, we need to stop arguing over whether time spent on line is good or bad, it is the environment that young people inhabit. What does measuring the time spent in our natural habitat tell us? Not much, I would argue. The fact that someone uses Facebook, while informative from a marketing perspective, does little to explain the subtleties of the users interaction; the content and context of the users communication and the user-defined, significant behavioural, emotional and cognitive outcomes of that interaction and the possible interrelations between these. Furthermore, and I’m not the first to say it, but allowing journalists to interpret scientific data and allowing them to publish sensational headlines on the back of these misguided interpretations is doing no one any favours.
There are 1.5 billion Facebook users and they’re not all having a bad time. I argue that FoMO can be a good thing. In fact, I have found in my research that Facebook use in the context of FoMO promotes awareness, affection, efficacy, truthfulness, support, certainty and that these drivers of “good” FoMO further promote generosity, patience and positive regard for the needs and opinions of others. FoMO can aggravate altruism and prosocial behaviour, it can empower, it can develop, enhance and maintain relationships. So, FoMO taps into our innate need for connection, contact and community. It stimulates reciprocity and enhances the positive regard we have for others.

Let’s have another look at those key findings above and think about them positively. It is important for young people (and us all, for that matter) to understand in-jokes, aren’t we all “bothered” if we miss out on a planned get-together and don’t we all worry that others are having fun without us? As I sit here, I KNOW that others are having more rewarding experiences than me….it is worrying. Isn’t that what it is to be human? Is it sending us “loco”? I don’t think so.

There are a myriad of reasons behind our use of social media; we inform and are informed, we present ourselves and we scrutinise the presentations of others, and, importantly, we make and maintain reciprocal and unidirectional connections with others.

From an evolutionary perspective, it could be said that, in managing our online reputations, we gain adaptive advantages. In fact, belonging to a social grouping is, at times, as important as our need for food, shelter and sex. Within the protective pod, herd or tribe our chances of survival and reproductive success increase. Our social support network buffers against depression and anxiety and, indeed, connection to the group has been shown to not only bolster survival, but increase thriving. Long before the advent of social media, we ‘liked’ and ‘friended’ people. So, it could be argued that Facebook just takes advantage of our innate, primordial need for the social.

In 1992, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, suggested that neocortical processing capacity limited the number of people with whom we could maintain inter-personal relationships. In other words, with the limited cognitive processing power of our puny brains, we had to limit the size of our social networks. By examining the size of the social networks of apes and measuring the size of their brains, Dunbar proposed that because of our big old brains we could maintain stable social networks of 148 warm bodies, rounded up to 150…..voilà, “The Dunbar Number”.

Not everyone agrees with the good doctors’ theory, with researchers at Harvard, for example, finding that even prolific socialisers often only have a small group of friends with whom they can discuss important matters. Bernard and Killworth of “small world” fame, have put forward estimates which almost double the “Dunbar Number” (290) and some sociologists make a distinction between one’s social “core” and our wider social network.

At a recent lecture, about 200 first year psychology students were asked, by show of hands (scientific?), how many friends each had on Facebook. The average participant, in this rigorous study, admitted to having between 300 and 400; some, at the tail-end of the graph admitting to numbers exceeding 500. Aside from this study (dripping with scientific rigour), there is little doubt that Facebook increases the size of our social network, but this makes sense if we think of Dunbar’s hypothesis…acquiring new “friends” online is cognitively frictionless and maintaining Facebook Connectedness (Grieve et al, 2013) is mentally, almost, free of charge.

Interestingly, Cameron Marlow and his associates, at Facebook, have found that, on average, the number of “friends” in a social network is…wait for it…calling Dr. Dunbar….120! More interestingly still, the authors found that Facebook users usually interact with a small, stable group. Corroborating what the researchers at Harvard had found, that generally, men with 120 friends actively interact with 7 people and women interact with 10. And what about those who have 500 Facebook friends? Well, the men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26, men communicate with 10 people, and women with 16. So, our active, core social network remains small and stable, but it seems that we passively track a much larger, but casual system of social relations.

So, when we post content to Facebook are we not being extraordinarily adaptive? Are we not moving beyond our small, stable “core”? Are we not advertising our wares outside our “Dunbar Number”? Have we not evolved and become fitter and more efficient? Our ancestors had to work considerably harder than us, physically and mentally, to maintain relationships, but in our digitised world, metaphorically picking fleas out of our friends fur takes a little bit less mental computation.
Grieve, R., Indian, M., Witteveen, K., Tolan, G., & Marrington, J. (2013). Face-to-face or Facebook: Can social connectedness be derived online? Computers in human behaviour, 29, 3. 604-609.
Carl Bialik (16 November 2007). “Sorry, You May Have Gone Over Your Limit Of Network Friends”. The Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved 13th Nov 2015.

We are, by our nature, social actors who participate actively and, to some extent, passively in relational systems which are connected to each other. These related social systems operate in various contexts (micro- and macro-level), in time and space and in patterns of relations containing differing content and differing characteristics. Our behaviour, perceptions, beliefs, actions, decisions and our experience influence and are influenced by the other actors in our relational structures.
Relational structures can be simple dyadic relations between one person and another, but more often than not they can form more complex clusters. Relations can be stable or transitory, unidirectional or reciprocal, but, no matter how simple or complex, these structures allow for the exchange of information, the flow of knowledge, the creation and maintenance of interests and the sharing of identities, values and norms.
Within these social, relational structures, communication is a most vital component. We communicate with the other actors in relational structures from birth and, over time and with experience, this communication becomes effortless and seamless. We touch, we speak, we listen, we make eye contact and we are aware of the presence of those in our relational systems; these interactions, these communication tools are inbred and innate. Not only this, but because of our early adoption of these tools, we have become acclimatised to exposure and the interactions can, in the main be anticipated and predictable. I know, for instance, that my mother will compliment me, but immediately temper the compliment with an admonishment; I will not be shocked.
Of late, the omnipresent smartphone has become a most indispensable accessory and has, in a relatively short time, forced its way into our arsenal of communication tools. It is undeniably incredible that we now have the ability to interact with friends, family and the world from the palm of our hands. More incredible still, is the extent to which electronic devices, but more accurately, the applications which run on them, are influencing our behaviour, our emotions and our experiences. We have seen, in our research, that along with delivering our relational structures to our hands, a broad range of our behaviours, emotions and cognitions become amplified. Furthermore, these thoughts, feelings and actions have a significant effect on further thoughts, feelings and actions.
In the normal run of events, the content of our networked relations, have attitudinal, behavioural and perceptual consequences on the individual, but we are generally accustomed to the intensity and strength of these interactions. Every now and then, an interaction surprises us, but this is unusual. One has to wonder if it is the proximity and the ubiquity of smartphones and their attendant applications which afford new, frequent, dynamic and often surprising interactions which make us susceptible to FoMO; FoMO is a driving force behind social media use (Przybylski et al, 2014). The content of the interactions from an enlarged set of structured relations, tethered to us, is continually, unpredictably changing and is being updated in real time. Even when we’re not interacting with our screens we know that this vibrant, shifting, shiny, new content is right there, just a swipe or a tap away.